1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fridge-freezer which is provided with a storage such as a vegetable compartment for storing fresh food together with a refrigerator room and a freezer. More particularly, the present invention relates to a fridge-freezer in which vegetables as fresh food are cooled in the vegetable compartment where temperature fluctuations are minimized through radiation cooling without supplying direct cool air to the vegetable compartment.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional refrigerator refrigerates a vegetable compartment by supplying cool air directly blowing into the vegetable compartment. This results in causing big temperature fluctuations in the vegetable compartment. In addition to that, convection may occur in the vegetable compartment, which develops dehydration in food stored in the vegetable compartment. This has made food stay fresh shorter. For example, FIG. 16 shows a refrigerator with the layout that a refrigerator room 100 is arranged at the top, a convertible compartment 400 and an ice-maker 500 are arranged below the refrigerator room 100, a freezer 200 is arranged at the bottom, and a vegetable compartment 300 is arranged above the freezer 200. The vegetable compartment 300 is provided with a drawer-type door and contains a vegetable case 301 and a fruit case 302. Those cases are designed to have an open top so as to have easy access to things stored. FIG. 17 is a structural diagram of a vegetable compartment. The vegetable compartment is structured such that cool air 4 for cooling the vegetable compartment blows off from the top surface into the vegetable compartment, and then returns to a cooling device chamber 3 through a return passage 9 for the vegetable compartment.
According to such a structure as introduced above, the vegetable case and the fruit case are designed not to receive direct cool air blowing inside for the purpose of preventing vegetables from being dried or frozen. No matter if the cases are provided with lids or not, however, convection of cool air occurs in the vegetable compartment, which develops dehydration in vegetables. At the same time, big temperature fluctuations occur in the vegetable compartment. On the other hand, as an art for preventing deterioration in food through indirectly cooling a vegetable compartment, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. SHO61-191860 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. HEI4-76372 are known. However, the former uses the temperature of return cool air from the refrigerator room for an indirect cooling, therefore, fails to obtain a cooling effect sufficiently because of a temperature rise by opening/closing the door. For that reason, a special structure and an extra space such as a hollow cooling device chamber are needed, which has made the refrigerator complicated and costly. The latter, in order to keep the inside temperature of the refrigerator as low as 1xc2x0 C., is provided with evaporators around the outer casing for minimizing an intense respiration effect. Then, a fan is provided inside the inner casing which is formed via an air layer so as to try to achieve a constant temperature inside the inner casing. As a result, a large-scale device is required, which has posed a problem. In addition to that, this has to move cool air, so that dehydration may be aggravated, which has posed another problem.
It is an object of the present invention to obtain a fridge-freezer such as a home refrigerator, which is simply structured and allows to make fresh food such as vegetables stay fresh longer in storage. Another object of the present invention is to make vegetables fresh longer in a food storage for storing food such as vegetables by minimizing temperature fluctuations in the storage through radiation cooling without blowing cool air into the storage. Still another object of the present invention is to obtain a fridge-freezer which is convenient in use.
These and other objects of the embodiments of the present invention are accomplished by the present invention as hereinafter described in further detail.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a fridge-freezer may include a food storage which is placed vertically between compartments such as a refrigerator room and a freezer via partition parts, and formed so that food such as vegetables stored therein is allowed to be taken out by opening/closing a door, a cooling device chamber, cooling air ducts for guiding return cool air from such as the refrigerator room to the cooling device chamber through the partition parts for separating the food storage from the compartments, a radiation cooling unit, which is provided between at least a part of the cooling air ducts and the food storage, for performing radiation cooling of the food storage by cold of cool air in the cooling air ducts, and a storage case which is contained in the food storage and allowed to be sealed for storing food such as vegetables. Then, the food storage is cooled without receiving cool air directly.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a fridge-freezer may include a food storage for storing food such as vegetables, a refrigerator room which is placed above the food storage, a freezer which is placed below the food storage, a cooling device chamber which is placed at a back of the food storage, partition parts for separating the food storage at least from the freezer and the cooling device chamber, radiation cooling units which are provided on the partition parts, for cooling the food storage by return cool air from the refrigerator room without supplying return cool air directly to the food storage, and a storage case which is contained in the food storage and allowed to be sealed for storing food such as vegetables. Then, the food storage is cooled by isolating the food from a flow of cool air.
Further scope of applicability of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description given hereinafter. However, it should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of illustration only, since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this detailed description.